ABSTRACT
The starting place of Queer theology is always the sitz en leben of our exclusion. Because Queer people are an eclectic tribe, or tribes, it is difficult to get at anything called Queer culture and sexuality. Hospitality, we learned in studying the Hebrew Scriptures in seminary, was a highly prized virtue of the desert culture. The concept of sexuality as bodily hospitality has the potential to reconcile the “poles of value” of safety and celebration; that is, in creating a theology of bodily “at-home-ment,” in which we view sexuality as one way we share the home of our bodies, emotions, and passions with others. In drawing a circle of containment around any sexual relation that is labeled unsafe, it is harder to focus on and define the essential goodness of sexuality. Marie Fortune’s book, Love Does No Harm , and the entire movement for AIDS-based safer sex come to mind.
